Mogging is getting tiresome

I'm a long-time mogger, and I've been in business since early-Cataclysm. I worked very hard to compile shopping lists and create post profiles for literally every rare and/or unique item in the game. Which means, of course, that I typically have over 1000 auctions posted at a time. Juggling these is a lot of work, because I cancel around 100-300+ per scan for repost.

My issue in the past, was that the consumer base on my realm is pretty cheap... most people a year ago weren't willing to spend 500g on a low end item, let alone 20k. Despite that, I was the only prominent mogger on the realm at the time, so I threw my gold around. I bought up every cheap green to force my prices. This worked amazingly well, until MoP hit.

With the massive influx of people leveling pandas, the AH is flooded with that used to be rare greens. On top of this, I am now competing against 5 other people who post about 1/3rd of the same items I have at extremely deep undercuts. I'm honestly not quite sure what to do about the situation. If you look up certain greens, the postings often appear like this: 1500g, 1500g, 999g, 800g, 200g, 199g, 80g. So not only am I sitting on a ton of stock that will never sell, but if I lower my thresholds I'm risking some guy buying it all cheap and posting at my original price (which actually has happened, I had three of my competitors attempt this).

I'm an incredibly stubborn person but I'm considering throwing in the towel and going back to one of my professions. I love the profits I get off mogging... when my competition slacks. Otherwise I'm lucky if I pull in more then 3k most days.

So, auction house gods, what would you recommend I do? Continue as normal, wasting time and energy when most of my stock is so undercut it'll never sell? Lower my thresholds and make a tiny fraction of potential profits? Bail altogether?...

I was in the exact same boat, minus the competition. I got tired of it, especially since MoP no one on my already cheap server is buying anymore. I vendored just about everything with a region value under 1k and I'm only selling the high end stuff. Sales are still almost non existent, but at least it's more manageable. I've also stopped buying. Personally I really got fed up with the market and time involved, especially since sales were so slow anyway. I'm very happy with my decision. I now have more time to focus on better markets.

Gold making methods have their seasons. Some methods only work well for a short time, a patch or 2, an xpac, etc. Transmog Vanilla greens have probably seen their best days. That doesn't mean there isn't money in this market anymore, but I think you just have to evolve with the change in player demand. I still flip a select group of items for transmog purposes, but honestly I ignore most vanilla greens as the supply/demand is just completely skewed. You have to start being smarter with your purchases. Pieces like or can still sell extremely well because they look amazing/unique on their own and are rare enough to keep the price high. Don't give up on selling items for transmog, just evolve your methods and choices a bit.

"A buyer has been found..." - The most beautiful words in the World...of Warcraft.

What you might consider is paring down what you sell. Check TSM and see what's moving. If somethign doesnt sell drop your price, or if it's already low just disenchant what you have so you dont have to mess with it anymore.

As far as undercutters...I buy what's below a certain point (how much depends on item and availability) and if I have too many of it I disenchant that too, just so I can control price and inventory.

Same boat, I decided just to get out. Kept the same prices but just stopped buying, I don't even check for undercuts anymore. Once I get rid of about half my stock, I'll start lowering prices/scanning again, but for now it's just too much work, so I've moved on to other avenues. I just post and forget, still pull around 2-3k

Gold making methods have their seasons. Some methods only work well for a short time, a patch or 2, an xpac, etc. Transmog Vanilla greens have probably seen their best days. That doesn't mean there isn't money in this market anymore, but I think you just have to evolve with the change in player demand. I still flip a select group of items for transmog purposes, but honestly I ignore most vanilla greens as the supply/demand is just completely skewed. You have to start being smarter with your purchases. Pieces like [Cloudkeeper Legplates] or [Ceremonial Leather Loincloth] can still sell extremely well because they look amazing/unique on their own and are rare enough to keep the price high. Don't give up on selling items for transmog, just evolve your methods and choices a bit.

I have both of those items in stock. Loincloths are being posted by my competitors for ~300g, Cloudkeepers are knocked down to around 1k (whereas I have sold a pair in the past for 20k). The issue is that the transmog market post-MoP seems to have attracted the same goblins that glyphs have. The people who, for whatever reason, are impatient or do not believe that an item will sell high... so they deep undercut and set their fallbacks at 200g or less.

I've seen people come and go in this market, nobody seems to have the commitment I do, so I'm confident that I can outlast nearly anyone. I think they get tired of spending 30+ minutes cancelling and reposting every session, who knows. I'm just getting to the point where I wonder if the profits are even worth my time. On good weeks I average about 12k-15k in profits, on bad weeks ~5k... overall I generally see about 8k a week. It's certainly nothing to scoff at, but I could do better if I branched back out into crafting. Expenses also have to be factored in... it takes me around 20 minutes per auction session to cancel and repost, and whenever my larger auctions expire, I spend about 400g reposting them again.

Originally Posted by Diablous

I still do very well with transmog

What you might consider is paring down what you sell. Check TSM and see what's moving. If somethign doesnt sell drop your price, or if it's already low just disenchant what you have so you dont have to mess with it anymore.

As far as undercutters...I buy what's below a certain point (how much depends on item and availability) and if I have too many of it I disenchant that too, just so I can control price and inventory.

It works for me on my server. Might work for you too.

In regards to pricing, I could lower my thresholds, but my competition will gobble it all up and repost at a higher price. I experimented with this in the past. While it's completely true that I would still be making a small profit (on some items) if they bought me out, I also don't hold any restock... so if they buy out an item I have, I'm out of business until I can find another. Meanwhile they post at my original price or higher, so they're seeing triple what they paid for mine. I could reset the markets if I wished to, but I would be shooting myself in the foot if I did... it would probably cost somewhere around 100-200k to completely reset. Definitely not worth it when more greens pour in every day. So I'm basically stuck in mog purgatory where my items aren't selling and if I undercut I won't make back what I've spent posting them.

And I do actually buy out undercutters when they're low enough. However, most of the items that get super low are already ones I have several of. Or, I'm the only one posting, some noob posts at 80s, a competitor buys it before I can, and deep undercuts me.

Mogging is still my main source of income because I haven't lvled up a bunch of alts to use professions effectively. I'm on a med-small server and my sales have never been really high. I average about 10k/week. Sales were a little slow after MoP but they've picked up again. I have a few competitors now (unlike in the old days) but they have no where near the amount of inventory I have (maybe 50 auctions vs my 400+ auctions).

I've never reposted due to undercuts; I just don't have the time to deal with that crap. I would only buy items under 50g and would never have more than 3 of an item in stock. If it was really cheap and I already had 3, I'd DE the item and sell the mats just to get it off the AH as Diablous mentioned.

Over time, I have lowered my minimum thresholds to 25-50% of fallback in TSM but if I have no competition, I still post at the prices I got from the Mog Father back at the beginning. I've also stopped restocking certain items that are too easily available; but conversely, I just started expanding into weapons instead of only dealing in armor.

As the others suggested, just try to cutback the amount of time you put into xmog sales and see how it affects your sales. You can probably make the same amount or close to it with much lower time investments.

I think half the problem with MoP is the way it's transformed many markets and not specifically Transmog per say, but the nature of alt profession levelling.

What I mean is that MoP in general is very 'un-alt friendly', especially for crafting.

Where many people would be content to control crafted markets pre MOP with top end characters having low entry points into crafted markets, MoP now pushed for high level toons with good crafted gear gated behind either BoP items or Reputation.

In that respect, enterprising goblins who are not content with this change are shifting to markets that have a good reputation for reward, without the tedious rep/bop grind.

This is where the transmog market comes in I think.

Now compounded with that, you also have the new gear that this xpac brings, along with the theme (asian) which is 'flavour of the month' and a sharp deviation from pre-mop asthetics (apart from a small number of items).

MoP has brought some very nice looking gear that many people are simply not wanting to transmog and this too will dry up sales, especially when a classic Tier 1 transmog can run into many thousands of gold in value.

I think the combination of all these factors (and more) are seriously impacting the early to mid term transmog markets on many servers, but I will say that you should persevere. Late in the xpac is where boredom sets in and with early gold making ventures gathering dust in many people's banks (remember, MoP is very un-alt friendly, so people are not as keen to roll an alt right now) you can see some decent coin coming in over the next few months.

If your position allows, you can always buy out the *really* cheap stuff and either vendor and/or DE and sell mats. It's a little extreme, but you can make back your investment removing all the cheap stuff from the market many times over on one sale and this should be in the back of your mind as a last resort. Sometimes, a 'market reset' like this can be good for clearing away the excess and removing competition.

For those that undercut you deeply, I'd personally follow them right down to vendor/DE costs as long as you didn't pay above those figures. Sometimes, wearing out your market can be just as effective and removing the goods from the shelf and like you, I'm sure your competitors will start to think after a period of time if it's worth the effort as well.

@Carch - Allow me to clarify what I said. I figured you had or have had those particular mog items I listed, that wasn't the point I was trying to make. Those 2 I linked are 2 of many that still sell well due to their uniqueness and rarity. If you can get items like for that cheap, then dang well buy out the market because unless someone is duping them which is HIGHLY unlikely, very few are going to show up over time like most Vanilla greens will.
All I'm suggesting is that you refine which items you buy and resell. Don't change your methods of buying out the market, outlasting the competition etc, just do it with more worthy items.

Also, on the whole idea of lowering your thresholds so your items will sell let me say this. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHO BUYS YOUR ITEMS. If your item sells to someone who wants to flip it for profit, so what!? You still got your sale and your profit. My favorite mog sales are to some other goblin that buys my green for 500g thinking he can flip it for 2k. More power to him but I still just made a ton of money on a silly common green.

Understand this about the Vanilla green xmog market. There's always going to be more and more and more of these greens posted. And because of their low level the likelihood of them being posted for cheap is extremely high. If you can buy 5 greens for 10g, and consistently flip them for 400g each to a goblin trying for 2k each I guarantee you will make 5 sales before he makes even 1.

Shoot, being in that kind of competitive Mog market is WAY BETTER. If other moggers will actually consistently buy your crap without fail, then you have a dependable income every time you snag that cheap green first.

"A buyer has been found..." - The most beautiful words in the World...of Warcraft.

Transmog just does not sell on my realm. Most of my items fall below 300g and I don't have many above 3500g. Doesn't matter, they complain in trade they can't waste their gold on greens to level with and there just are not many people making mog outfits. I'm thinking of having a transmog fasion show to stimulate sales.